Faracy Grouse
Faracy Grouse is an American writer originally from Minneapolis. She just moved to Britain after four years in Seville, Spain as the resident foreigner in a neighborhood where a man being seen hanging out laundry could cause a building wide sensation.
As a child she was slow to read and write, unable to do either until the age of eight. Instead she would make up the rest of the story or draw pictures to remind herself what she was supposed to have written if asked to read aloud. Dyslexic and excruciatingly shy, she was not able to take refuge in books the way that many quiet children do. Where she excelled was in drawing and creating worlds in her mind.
However, by the age of 11 she was a voracious reader, particularly of non-fiction books about foreign cultures. She knew from a very early age that she wanted to see the world.
She first discovered a love for poetry at the age of 13 through an article on Russian poet Alexander Pushkin in an issue of National Geographic.
With the encouragement of a few creative English teachers, she began to write prose and poetry as a teenager.
After studying voice, she went on to complete a degree in Anthropology and European History, marrying a man she met in Spain and having a child in the process.
During the breakdown of this marriage, she took up writing once again. This time it was to survive. She felt that she could write her way out of a terrible situation, and in the end she did.
She has written a full-length screenplay, numerous short stories and put together several collections of poetry. She is currently working on a memoir.
Faracy would very much appreciate hearing your input about her work, and would be more than happy to discuss publication with any who may be interested.
You may contact Faracy at alumine3@gmail.com
You may read Faracy’s poetry here:
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Steady Ground for Sea Legs
I want to write a very grown up love poem
for this seemingly
very grown up sort of love,
the kind which is polished of most of its sharp edges,
warm but never burns the tongue
the kind of love which sleeps in late on Saturday mornings snuggled under one thousand thread count sheets-
This love doesn’t lend itself well to sweeping semantics;
It’s too quiet and sophisticated for that,
Gone from it are the teenaged dramatics,
empty threats, idle dreams and false needs-
I want to write you a love poem,
from a very grown up woman
who has completely grown into her own skin,
but here I am still fidgeting and pulling at my sleeves;
So here is this,
from someone at that strange fevered edge of youth,
sea legs accustomed to violent waves
hobbling about on smooth seas
not yet believing that the likelihood of drowning
has been forever decreased.
Waking up with Steve Buscemi
Blinking open bleary eyes,
one by one
Where there should be space to stretch
there is a lump,
warm and breathing heavily
in raspy snores
there is the smell,
rancid arm-pits smothered in Axe body spray,
feet with long dirty nails
And you remember what half a bottle of Kharkov vodka
made you do
Exhaustion and dizziness cannot keep you in bed,
but the bed is yours
and he’s asleep in it
shamelessly naked
the mysteriously moist skin of his posterior sticking to your back
he turns around to embrace you,
breathing alcoholic morning breath
through gappy yellow teeth,
pencil thin brown mustache adorning
skinny blue lips that try to kiss you,
awkward coffee awaits-
for this seemingly
very grown up sort of love,
warm but never burns the tongue
It’s too quiet and sophisticated for that,
empty threats, idle dreams and false needs-
from a very grown up woman
who has completely grown into her own skin,
but here I am still fidgeting and pulling at my sleeves;
from someone at that strange fevered edge of youth,
sea legs accustomed to violent waves
hobbling about on smooth seas
not yet believing that the likelihood of drowning
has been forever decreased.
one by one
there is a lump,
warm and breathing heavily
in raspy snores
rancid arm-pits smothered in Axe body spray,
feet with long dirty nails
made you do
but the bed is yours
and he’s asleep in it
shamelessly naked
the mysteriously moist skin of his posterior sticking to your back
breathing alcoholic morning breath
through gappy yellow teeth,
pencil thin brown mustache adorning
skinny blue lips that try to kiss you,
The Polyandrist
I married myself today
put a ring on my left hand
dissolving any unions previously held
at least in spirit
which beats paper in a fight
I married myself today
and me and me made love
masculine and feminine elements
harmoniously united in body
the only I’ll truly ever own
for love
ultimate fidelity
comfort
and lifelong companionship
but I will love more
just know
that I am mine
as you are yours
with
terminally humbled genius
with
a Dalit´s approachability
held together with indestructible glue
with molten hard drying clear love-
with obsessive tendencies
with childlike wonderment
and
humor inappropriately
and
embrace short of suffocation-
with self-cleaning soul
and
listen interestedly
and
adore genuinely
with
perfect humanity.
Artificially inseminated
and born underweight
to a woman
whose body rejected
pregnancies-and I wonder
my spirit volunteered,
or was dragged
into this life
to repair the karma of the last
I was a drunken
womaniser
with a trail of children
like breadcrumbs-
into
my vacuous divine void
absorbed and lost
from thought,
a canyon littered
with screaming
invisible spirits
still waiting
to be soothed
And I wonder
I must try to
hold them all
soberly
like a mother.
My Parts in Your Boxes
The heart was the first part to go,
into a smooth Russian laquer Palach
gilded with a peacock
still beating
slippery with Slavic blood,
clicked shut
into your pocket-
The brain stem was the second to go,
strangled by your twines,
into an oval covered candy dish
surrounded by green butter mints
kept at room temperature
on your dining table-
gingerly squeezed out manually
stored on ice
in a teal blue IKEA lunchbox,
in the freezer
still containing the previous nights liquor-
spleen and oesophagus,
uterus and pancreas
in little ceramic folkloric vases
kept in your bed side cabinet-
and I’ve lost track of all you’ve got,
in salt shakers shaped as chickens,
wine bottles and flower pots;
my blood, my tears, my fluids
waiting to be claimed upon my return.
Let Me Make You a Man
Masturbation has grown tiresome
even with the added meadow scenario,
and though your repression was refreshing
I´ve grown tired of its regret flavored aftertaste
So what will it be?
speak to me with your honest voice
the one which wine provokes
and my beauty should bring out soberly
and make you a man,
because I see right through you darling
into your potential and tender soul.
ecstatic wails
and catatonia
she speaks with my voice
revealed as secrets
simply said
demands
to stay alive
The smell of summer is the smell of you,
grass and green leaves,
charcoal and flowers from familiar gardens
in a parallel universe in a parallel home,
wrapped in a down blanket
with a man I felt I’d never not known–How you haunt me
in these familiar corners,
how you haunt me
in the gentle fog of dreams,
with open arms and “I love you”
before fading into wintry blackness
snow under feet-
light as a scent in the air
to remind me that you are still there
somewhere, missing me
with open arms and an empty bed
hoping that I lose myself enough
to find you again.
Doom’s Parting
For the last month
sick with sadness
but no delectable ache
nine swords in my back
like a drowning person swallowing water to hasten death
unbelieving
barely breathing
and with it my divine spark
not someone I, even wanted to know
hopeless
out of habit
What an absurd concept love itself!
how impossible
too miraculous
With the statistics of reproduction!
how impossible
too miraculous
I thought,
numb my body
and take my organs for someone dying with a soul-
I would take no more space, oxygen or time;
With nothing to offer but my body,
I was worth more dead than alive To think I used to see magic,
hold spirit in my hands;
Where was the God that I believed in?
Something dreamed up
to bring comfort to the soul I no longer had ?
tried to will death
as not to spread myself like the disease I felt I’d become;
But the act of suicide was more effort than what I could stand.
and let the wind blow me to it
on a cool August night
sitting alone
waiting for the saudade to fall with the rain
I felt nothing but the drizzle on my face
and the damp stiffness in my hands,
trying to conjure a feeling
with threadbare memories
from the landfill of my mind.
there would never be a reunion with my youth
and I could never reverse the sliding doors of time
with a kiss from the lips of what I left behind.
The rain fell harder
splattering teardrops I no longer had
my energy glowing blue
the white wool clouds weeping down from the sky
and the old me would be lead to believe
they were being held,
and made me look up
and there were brilliant stars,
stars like I’d never seen a city
I smiled,
grateful to be alive.
A Love Unresolved
A love unresolved
slinks in through the lips
and into the mouth,
with its soursweet flavour,
stronger and more sublime
with each mile travelled from
conception,a love unresolved,
climbs its way from a lump in the throat,
into dreams,
leaving a vaportrail of fecund nostalgia
which left to wander,
crawls into the waking mind
and comes alive,
cannot scream over its entrapment,
no,
it will be found
pounding its drums
of freeze-dried laughter with evanescent fists,
rattling its ghostly barrels of tenderness,
praying for wisdom to finally snap off
the satin noose of sentiment,
waiting,
sometimes an entire lifetime
to break free and fall into a quiet section of heart
where it can rest.
Find comfort
in
repetition
or you controlling it
all yours, containing panic into neat little corners
a song
a word
a person
and missing the comfort of the monotonous ache